Nationalism - AP European History

During the rise of nationalism in Europe—a process begun around the sixteenth century and culminating in the World Wars of the twentieth century—the most important factor for determining shared national identity was a shared language. This is how German nationality arose from the scatterings of Germanic people around Europe—they often spoke the same root language. The same is true in Italy, France, England, and so on.

Before 1848, the Kingdom of Hungary had long been a territory of the Holy Roman Empire, and then later the Austrian Empire, but was nominally governed independently of both. Following the failed Hungarian rebellion of 1848, the Kingdom of Hungary was suppressed by the Austrian Empire, but nationalist desires were difficult to eradicate. Following the defeat of Austria at the hands of Prussia in the Austro-Prussian War, the Austrian Empire lost much of its influence in Europe and in a desperate attempt to redefine itself in the wake of rising nationalism agreed to the Compromise of 1867, which created a dual monarchy in Austria-Hungary.

The term “Westphalian sovereignty” refers to the idea that each independent state has sovereignty and control over all the territory within its border, exclusive of any external powers. This idea underpins the nature of modern statehood and first emerged, or rather was first codified, in the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the devastating Thirty Years’ War. Due to European expansion around the world in the centuries following, the Peace of Westphalia's “Westphalian sovereignty” is generally universal in its application.

The term “irredentism” is used to describe the belief that a territory within another country’s borders should actually be part of a nation that exists either outside of or independent of those borders. Generally, in European history, it refers to a territory that was once part of a nation, such as France with Alsace-Lorraine or Germany with Austria, that has been lost in conflict and which the losing nation desires to reclaim. It is one of the more dangerous and prominent forms of European nationalism because it so often leads to war in European history.

At the height of its reach, the Austro-Hungarian Empire occupied much of Central Europe and extended south into the Balkans and East into Eastern Europe. It was composed of several distinct ethnic groups, all of whom had a shared history, language, and cultural identity. This had long been the composition of the empire, but with rising nationalism in the nineteenth century, this became a problem that was more difficult to manage. All of these ethnic groups expressed nationalist ambitions in the nineteenth century except for the Poles, who lived outside of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and were at the time primarily controlled by Russia and Germany. Each of these ethnic groups currently has its own nation-state, with all of them being self-explanatory except perhaps the Magyars (Hungary).

The Chios Massacre took place in 1822 when troops from the Ottoman Empire massacred much of the civilian population of the Greek island of Chios during the Greek War of Independence. The territory that comprises modern-day Greece had been under Ottoman control for several centuries when Greek nationalism flared up in the nineteenth century. By the 1820s, this nationalism manifested itself in open revolt. The revolution was initially quelled by the Ottoman Empire, but the violent means that the Ottoman Empire employed enflamed the Greek people and was widely condemned by the international community. The major powers of Western Europe soon intervened, and in 1832, the Greek nation declared independence.

The German policy of Kulturkampf was undertaken during the reign of Otto von Bismarck in the 1870s. Its primary purpose was to dramatically weaken the influence of the Catholic Church in Germany and to secularize German society. At the time, roughly two-thirds of Germany was Protestant, but a powerful minority, particularly in formally Polish territory, still followed Catholicism. Bismarck’s primary goal was to strengthen the German government and unify German national identity at the expense of the Catholic faith.

The Act of Union of 1801 dissolved the Irish Parliament and formally ended any semblance of Irish independence. The territory of Ireland was incorporated into the United Kingdom, now called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The Act of Union may be understood as a British government reaction to the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and also a response to the French Revolution a decade earlier, both of which inflamed Irish nationalism.

The Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia was one of the most influential and economically prosperous by the time the movement towards Italian unification began in the mid-nineteenth century. Led by Victor Emmanuel and Camillo di Cavour, the Kingdom was the primary driving force behind Italian unification. In 1861, the Kingdom of Sardinia annexed all the other territories that comprise modern-day Italy into the Kingdom of Italy.

Many European nation-states coalesced around ethnic identity and shared cultural heritage. The Spanish nation-state coalesced around both of these, but also around the religion of Catholicism. Protestantism was almost non-existent in Spain and those who adhered to either Islam or Judaism were either banished or forcefully converted to Catholicism during the formation of the Spanish nation-state.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, each of these nations was either a part of a larger empire or split into many different kingdoms and republics except for Russia, which already had a centralized government that reflected the people of the same nation.

The battles of Tours and Lepanto were not fought by English forces, so we can rule these two answer choices out immediately. The battles of the Somme and Trafalgar were fought during World War One and the Napoleonic Wars, respectively, and so came too late to be part of the rise of English nationalism. The Battle of Agincourt, which took place during the Hundred Years’ War with the French, happened in the fifteenth century and so came at the perfect time to be incorporated into the rise of nationalism in England. It helped solidify what it meant to be English, as opposed to French, and led to the rise of self-identifying nationalist ethnicity among the English people.

Realpolitik was the primary political philosophy of the German unifying leader Otto von Bismarck. Realpolitik is based around a pragmatic application of political power, or political power wielded outside of ideological, religious, or ethnic motivation.

Garibaldi was one of the most famous revolutionaries of the mid-nineteenth century. His revolutionary career began in South America as an agitator and soldier in favor of various republican causes. He returned to Europe in the midst of the revolutions of 1848. He raised an army of volunteers to fight the Austrian Empire in order to free Northern Italy so that the entire Italian peninsula could be unified. Garibaldi was one of the central figures of the Italian Risorgimento, which resulted in the creation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.

Giuseppe Garibaldi was an Italian military commander who lived from 1807 until 1882 and who fought in a variety of conflicts meant to bring about the unification of Italy. He was a trusted general and advisor of Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of Italy, and is credited with helping him achieve a mostly unified Italy. Garibaldi was widely respected for his renowned military mind and was fairly popular. During the fight to unify Italy, he had to rely mainly on volunteers who became known as “Redshirts” because they lacked the money to buy uniforms and instead they wore red. These volunteers helped not only by fighting, but also by showing that this movement had popular support among the people.

"Irredentism" comes from the Italian phrase "Italia irredenta,"which means "unredeemed Italy" and referred to those culturally and linguistically Italian regions ruled by Austria that Italian nationalists wanted to be part of a Unified Italy. Irredentism was also a key component in German unification, French nationalism, and pan-Slavic movements. Remarkably for the period, irredentism also had few ties to particular forms of government, since it was tied to ethnic, cultural, and linguistic affinities.

Giuseppe Garibaldi never proposed the idea of incorporating the Northern Italian States into the Austrian Empire. He led the "Red Shirts" in a military campaign which led to the unification of his conquered area with that ruled by Victor Emanuel.

The taking of Venice by the forces of the Kingdom of Italy in 1866 as part of the Third War of Italian Independence was a key moment in the process of Italian unification. The absorption of the papal states by Italy after the Capture of Rome in 1870 also resulted in the period from 1870 to 1829 during which the pope refused to acknowledge the loss of his temporal power, and was thus described as the “prisoner in the Vatican.” The Expedition of the Thousand red shirts destroyed the power of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and created the Kingdom of Italy. The Conte di Cavour’s alliance with France led to victory at the Battle of Solferino and the consolidation of Piedmont-Sardinia, the state largely responsible for Italy’s formation. Cesare Borgia was a 16th century statesman idolized by Machiavelli.

Otto von Bismarck, a Prussian nobleman, undertook the unification of the German states through a series of consolidating wars. He ruled Germany alongside Wilhelm I as Chancellor from 1871 to 1890. Wilhelm II ruled Germany from 1891-1902. Otto von Hapsburg was the Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary. Lech Walesa was the President of Poland and a prominent human rights advocate. Johann Gottfried Herder was an 18th century poet and philosopher.